Sunday, December 22, 2013

Building it on the Cheap- The Peugeot AO-8

It used to be that when I thought of an entry level Peugeot of the 10 speed Era I would immediately think of the ubiquitous UO-8 which was made by the hundreds of thousands (Millions?). And Then I started working on the AO-8 that is my current project.

Courtesy of retro Peugeot from '69 French catalog

The AO-8 is the lesser know little brother of the aforementioned UO-8. And its well err a less expensive, cost conscious, OK I will say it cheaper version of its big brother. Cheaper you ask? How is it cheaper Ryan? Well let me tell you.

Cable routing, Rather than use a solid circle of metal they used little "wings" that bend to wrap around the cables. I'd never seen this before this bike.

And plastic, lots of plastic, in some interesting places. Peugeot is of course famous (infamous?) for using Derlin plastic in their front and rear derailleurs all up and down their 10 speed line, although for this bike both RD jockey wheels have lost about 25% of their roundness, so maybe the AO-8 got cheaper plastic?

For the AO-8, however, they added a few "extras". The down-tube shifters are plastic with a thin metal sheath wrapped around 3 sides, I have actually seen this on a few other entry level bikes but the higher level Peugeot's like the Course (UO-10) had metal DT shifters.

The really surprising place I found plastic was in the bottom bracket bearing cages, also something I had never seen before.

Another classic cost saver is stamped steel rear drop outs

as opposed to forged rear drops.

Courtesy of www.mytenspeeds.com

The final place that is an obvious cost saver is the replacing the head-badge with a sticker, sorry decal.

Ok I have been making fun of our French cousins with this bike but all the above said I would rather have this bike than 99.9995% of the department store bikes of today. Hope to have this baby all back together soon so you can judge for yourself.

2 comments:

I'll bet that when you have this finished we can move that number to 100% over department store bikes. Ryan, I currently have no bikes to work on except normal maintenance on my own rides. And, with zero riding going on....I have clean bikes that do not need any work. Kind of a weird feeling. There is an old fellow here in town who passed away last month that I have been told has quite an old bike collection of misc. frames and parts. I hope his relatives open it up for sale as they dispose of his estate. Might be a future project in there for me.Other than that...now just waiting for spring as we have the solstice behind us.Merry Christmas to you!!Jim

Jim, thanks for stopping by, man if you lived a bit closer I would have a frame or two that I could put in your queue including a nice Schwinn Traveler III frame-set that would be right up your alley, in lieu of that I hope the Estate of the old fellow you mentioned drops you a few gems ;-)